None of them were alive anymore, but there they were, lurching and jerking and stumbling for the front doors. They left a trail of blood and black goo. Tracy turned in the tight space and saw their bloated ankles and feet. They left the building.
Tracy started to cry. She was alone. All alone now.
Through the tears she saw a line of black creeping over the back of her hand. It travelled to her thumb and entered under the nail. Tracy jumped back and hit her aching head on the underside of the desk. It felt as if someone was jabbing spikes under all of her finger nails. The agony spread into her hand and intensified up her arm.
Twelve seconds later the swarm found her heart and put Tracy out of her misery.
Chapter 8
This wasn’t possible. Caitlan slammed the steering wheel, hoping that rage alone would start the car again. Maybe the vehicle would sense this anger—like all those travelling in the Audi with her—and listen to her demands. The car remained quiet, and so did the five passengers.
“Fucking piece of shit. Goddamned German piece of fucking shit.” She turned her head slowly and saw Angela staring at her. The woman’s face was ashen grey. The boy sitting on her lap looked even more shocked. Caitlan rested a hand on his knee. “I’m sorry for the swearing, sweetie. It’s nothing to do with you.”
Angela opened her door and the boy slid outside. “Well then maybe you could control that temper a bit better before you fly off the handle like that. For God’s sake, Caitlan, the car ran out of gas.”
Caitlan nodded. The doors in the back opened and Hayden, Amanda, and Michael stepped out. “I can’t help myself. I see red, and I let the expletives rip.” She rubbed her palms along the wheel, as if trying to soothe to the car after her outburst. “So many people are dead now. All the millions of cars no longer running... I never imagined finding gas would be so hard. There’s oceans of it sitting in the underground tanks of every gas station in North America, and we can’t get to a single drop of it.”
“That’s what happens when the power shuts off. No sense beating your car up over it... or anyone else.”
Hayden knocked softly on Caitlan’s window. She opened the door instead of lowering the window; the battery had to remain charged as long as possible. They were in the middle of nowhere, the night would grow cold, and the car was the only shelter they had. “Yeah, I know,” she told him, “I’m sorry I swore again in front of the kids.”
Hayden shook his head. “It’s not that. There’s a town maybe six miles west of here called Brayburne. With any luck we might be able to find a vehicle with fuel inside.”
The leather car seat squeaked as Caitlan pulled her big body out of the car. “I ain’t built for walking, handsome. Take Angela and see how you make out.”
Hayden shook his head again. “I’ll be honest... Nicholas hasn’t exactly warmed up to you yet. I’m not leaving him here with you as the only adult.”
Caitlan got that look in her eye—it seldom left—and her big shoulders hunched up. She started towards Hayden and he held his hand up. “Don’t try and break my nose again. I won’t let you.”
“You gonna hit a woman?”
“It wouldn’t be my first choice.”
Angela was out of the car now. “The two of you stop it!”
“I’m not going to get into it with him again,” Caitlan told her. “I was going to start walking to this town he’s talking about. Hopefully find a container and some gas.”
Nicholas ran to Hayden. Hayden steered him back to the car. “You’re going to stay with Angela, okay, buddy? We’ll be back before it gets dark.” He protested, but settled down once he was standing next to Angela. The woman had a way with kids, Hayden had seen it with the Fulger twins. They gravitated towards her. Fighting with Caitlan wouldn’t have been his first choice, and leaving his son with an almost complete stranger wouldn’t have been his second, but Hayden had very few choices left. He looked at Angela, and then looked at the passenger window towards the glove box.
She nodded. Caitlan had a gun stored in there the guards back at the Sandman had missed. “Nicholas will be fine.”
Hayden nodded back. “Maybe we’ll luck out and find a few cars along the way. Hopefully one of them will have something to carry gas in. We could be back in half an hour.”
“Sure.” Angela watched the two head west. Luck wasn’t something she put much faith in.
You’re alive, girl. Wouldn’t you call that lucky?
She ignored the voice in her head and took Nicholas’s hand in hers. “It’s just you, me, and the twins for the next little while, sport. What should we do for fun?”
Michael and Amanda were sitting on the Audi’s hood. “I used to play video games for fun.”
“That isn’t an option anymore,” Angela said.
“I spy with my little eye?” His sister offered.
“Something grey,” Michael countered. “The sky, the ground, and the frigging road.”
“I was gonna say yellow... that’s the color of Nicholas’s shoelaces.”
Michael leaned back on the car and covered his face with both hands. “I should’ve taken a handheld console from the toy store. And a million batteries.”
***
“You sure there’s a town up ahead?”
“Positive.
